


To Travel On

by Katherine



Category: The Ship Who Sang - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-16 18:17:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14816405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: Kira had taken the necessary time in her grieving to feel that solution was possible, and their mission together was going to stretch for years.





	To Travel On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



Early on, Helva pulled strings to ensure that the gametes Kira requested from the genetic bank were incontestably reserved. She was determined that Kira's plan (Helva's own solution) be possible. Kira had taken the necessary time in her grieving to feel that solution was possible, and their mission together was going to stretch for years.

It might have grown tedious had it been only one collection, stowing, and delivery. (Or, of course, had they not encountered the death-yearning rogue brainship.) But their overarching mission to help repopulate Nekkar was made of a web of shorter journeys.

*

Kira was utterly conscientious about all that was necessary for their embryonic passengers. When a knocked-apart connection threatened as much as a single compartment in the ribbon, or a spill might cause an accident, she corrected the problem immediately. But the merely superficial matters were not ones which she attended to, spending her time on vital checks instead.

"I'll be having my interior done over after my stork days are done," Helva said. With a near-automatic thought, she adjusted her lighting in the area to bring out the stain nearest to Kira's gaze.

"I could clean there for you," Kira offered, apologetic yet understandably reluctant.

Helva wanted to be gleaming when ready to be courted again, but she told herself firmly that she needn't be vain in the meantime.

Helva reassured her temporary partner that was not required. That corner-most stain was a cosmetic matter, not a functional one. They had more than enough to accomplish of truly functional, immediate tasks.

*

Ironically, the topic of decorating was one they returned to.

"Yellow is a colour well-studied to soothe without over-specifying expectations," Kira mentioned.

Helva let her own approximation of a laugh be her first response, thinking of the tiny embryos, too small to be taking in sensation as yet, let alone light or surrounding colours. "They're not grown to children to be influenced yet," she said. "Their environs," she begun to say. As before she thought 'shells', and dropped into a silence quickly filled in by Kira.

"Are much smaller than painted rooms," Kira said. To change the mood, she started a rousing song about being content to live vigorously in small spaces. The children-to-be were probably far too young to be influenced yet by music, either, but the excuse for song was appreciated by both shellperson and soft'.

They shared music of increasing variety as they smoothly journeyed together on the routes from scattered planets to Nekkar, outwards and back again.

Comfortable habits formed between the two of them. Still-sleepy snatches of melodies from Kira most mornings, to daytime conversation both spoken and in music, to winding down.

In the last year they made a regular routine of lullabies in what they designated evening. Helva let Kira claim aloud, without contradiction, that she was choosing slow evening songs for the embryos, to mark the turning into artificial ship's night, for Helva herself...

Helva kept to herself her secret joy thinking of when Kira would sing a new child to sleep, in the gloaming of some quiet future planetside.

*

For all that Helva had no capacity to eat (in the chewing and swallowing sense, her needs supplied by calibrated nutritional fluid) the habit formed that she join Kira at mealtimes. Kira would bring her dish to in front of Helva's enclosing column. After the first three rounds of paprikash, Helva caught the trick of vastly lowering the thresholds in her airborne particulate sensing, thus enabling her to "smell" the spices.

Discussing Kira's family recipes took them, with slowly easing shared pain over time, to loved ones gone. Kira came to speak of Thorn, then Helva of Jennan. The loss still ached, but never so fiercely as the first fact of it had for Helva. Another's tears had helped her in her journey through grief, and now the stabilising routine with Kira as they helped to stock a world with new human lives.

They talked about music, and families, and names. At first Kira couched the latter in speculation about what names might be given to the ribbons-full they carried. In time, she admitted out loud to choosing what would be her own future child's name. Genetically her mother's child and that of Thorn's father. But to be carried by her, raised by her.

Helva imagined how, in years to come, Kira would tell that child its origins, in love and longing, grieving and hope.

Their ease in partnership had been, in all probability, enhanced by the mutual knowledge that it was temporary. After they completed the mission, collecting then delivering the full count of embryos to Nekkar, they would part. Kira would make her own home planetside, carry and raise a long awaited child, while Helva would travel on her next assigned missions among the stars.

*

Kira's guitar was already packed, but Helva marked the telltale twitch of her fingers ready to shape a chord.

All too often those who Helva met had griefs that she could not solve. Having been part of Kira's healing warmed her. These years had soothed Helva's own grieving as well. They both were better-placed in their lives from this time which they had shared.

**Author's Note:**

> > "Going home to stay, going home to stay  
> That silly wind will soon begin and I'll be on my way  
> And I feel like I just want to travel on"  
> — Bob Dylan, "Gotta Travel On"


End file.
